"Blink:The power of thinking without thinking" - by Malcolm Gladwell!!

Last month I read "Blink". This book mainly talks about the power of thoughts that happen in a blink, i.e., a couple of seconds. These thoughts are from the subconscious and can have positive as well as negative affects. The author gives many examples, tests, and statistics where such thoughts from the subconscious mind are involved.
This book is very informative and an interesting read. Though at the end, I felt incomplete. I didn't quite get the purpose. Probably it is just me who feels incomplete if there is no message at the end. Probably the purpose of this book was just to make ourselves aware that everyone has these kind of subconscious thoughts. Whenever we are trying to judge something, we use these thoughts. In many cases our thoughts are correct, but at the same time, we might be wrong sometimes. So it is good to be aware of that. I do recommend this book to you.

"Chariots of Fire" - movie!!

Finally I saw the movie "Chariots of Fire" this weekend. I wanted to watch it since a long time. It is a very good and inspirational one. The movie is slow-paced but I didn't get bored at all. It is about the life of two athletes who participated and won in the 1924 Olympics. The movie shows the contrasting characters of these two athletes.

- One of them is a missionary and runs because he believes God made him real fast. He fulfills his duty towards God by running. Whenever he runs, he feels he is serving God. The faster he runs, he experiences more pleasure and joy. 'Ian Charleson' played this role and did an awesome job. Whenever he runs, you actually see his facial expressions change, and the joy on his face. I thought the movie was worth watching just for that.

- The second athlete is a Jew and a student at Cambridge. He is full of frustration and anger because of the discrimination he faces and constantly wants to prove himself. He knows he is fast and wants to prove to the world that he is the fastest runner. He has a different kind of drive and motivation to win.'Ben Cross' played this role and you can see a different kind of emotion when he runs. He is serious and all he can think of are the prejudices and wants to prove himself to the upper class society of Britain.

This movie has very good background music. The music so aptly depicts the zeal in the athletes. The movie also has some very beautiful and scenic locations. On the whole an excellent movie with a good message - "We can perform our best in a job that we really like, enjoy, and feel passionate about. When we feel this kind of fire in our hearts, nothing can stop us from winning."

Jumping out of an airplane!!

In the last couple of weeks, I heard about skydiving experiences from three independent sources, totally out of the blue(probably some kind of a sign :-) ). All of them had only good things to say about it - awesome, memorable and enthralling. After hearing from them I got tempted and added this to my list of 'Things to do in my lifetime'. But I don't know if I will ever succeed at that for a number of reasons.
- Firstly, I have to overcome my fear of free-fall(worst of all fears).
- Jumping out of a plane at a 12000 feet altitude sounds crazy.
- What if the parachute fails to open-up?
- What if the winds carries me away and I don't land at the correct place?
- and so on... this list is quite long...
Inspite of all the buts, I know that once I take the plunge, it will be over in a few seconds. Those few seconds will be a lifetime experience - flying through the clouds, approaching land at a high speed and then suddenly being pulled back up by the parachute.

This weekend I heard a speech on 'The power of the word'. The speaker said that if one has a dream, they should tell people around them about it. For example, here I am telling you that I will 'jump out of an airplane' one day. It seems that 'the power of word' is such that I eventually will be able to do it, inspite of all fears. The reason being, there is always some person whom I told about my dream, coming back to me and asking, 'so what happened to that thing you said you would do, did you do it?' - duh.. I'll be ashamed to say 'no, not yet'. I will probably feel responsible for my words, get pushed into fulfilling this wonderful dream someday, and finally get rid of my fear forever! I will soon write on my skydiving experience :-).

Welcome!!

My friends introduced me to the concept of blogging. I enjoyed reading their blogs. I spent some time thinking if I should start mine as well. I kept thinking "why bother?". After spending quite some time reading others blogs, now I have realized that this is a great way of sharing thoughts, day-to-day experiences, interesting incidents in life, or just about anything. So here I am.

I am not exactly sure what I am going to be writing about. But I am sure this will be a learning experience.